Meeting Ed and getting to spend time with him was a real honor for Chris and me. His breadth of knowledge of the central banking system as well as his engaging manner of storytelling are masterful. Plus, he's simply a wonderfully kind person.

Ed's decades of research and critique of the Federal Reserve, sadly, have left him with conclusions that corroborate our own. Despite its carefully-crafted image as an essential public servant, Griffin concludes it is anything but. It is a private cartel that has connived its way to tremendous advantage and power, secretly (and not-so-secretly) plundering the American people of their treasure and freedoms.

On The Fed's True Goals

[In researching the Federal Reserve] I was looking for a very complex mechanism. And I couldn’t believe at that time that there would be deliberate deception in this system. So, I was working on the false assumption that everybody in the system was doing their best to make it work on behalf of mankind and on behalf of society. Initially, I never entertained the idea that its goal was not to benefit mankind at all.

And so, where one would say, look: the Federal Reserve system is failing to meet its goals — because it said its goals were to stabilize the economy and to preserve purchasing power, etc. — I finally came to the realization: No, those are not its goals.

If we understand what its goals really are, then it’s not failing at all. It’s succeeding amazingly well.

And most people, as I initially did, have found that an impossible assumption to entertain. They simply can't get over it.

On Whether The Fed Is A 'Conspiracy'

Most dictionary definitions of the word "conspiracy" seem to agree that a conspiracy occurs when:

two or more people come together

they use methods of deceit and deception to achieve a goal

which is unethical or illegal.

Those are the three requirements. So talk about the Fed:

Are there two or more people? Oh, yeah. OK, there’s one down.

Do it use methods of secrecy? Yes. It has secret meetings [beginning from its very conception at Jekyll Island] . It has closed meetings in which the public is excluded and the minutes of which are not shared for years, sometimes decades, sometimes never. Yes, of course, elements of the Fed's activities are highly secretive.

And is the result either unethical or illegal? Well, now that’s where it gets interesting.

Because first of all, it’s not illegal what they’re doing — because the banking industry has heavy influence over the people who write the laws. That’s the reason the banks are so involved in the political system: so they can write the laws. So, that what they want to do is legal.

So, the Federal Reserve is plundering people legally. But is what its doing unethical? The propaganda is that the Federal Reserve is 'stabilizing the economy'. They’re doing it for the American people.

But you and I, or anybody else that’s not on the receiving end of all this money flow that the Fed has created, we look at what they’re actually doing and most of us would say it's highly unethical. Our wealth, our economic prosperity and financial freedom — all are being siphoned away — for the benefit of a very small elite few. I think most people who they really understand what the Federal Reserve is doing would agree that’s unethical.

And there’s where you meet the definition of a conspiracy, though I don’t insist anybody call it that. Just call it what it is: a group of people who know what they’re doing and are plundering us.

Click the play button below to listen to Chris' interview with G. Edward Griffin (58m:35s).

Transcript

Chris Martenson: Welcome to this Peak Prosperity Podcast. I am your host, Chris Martenson, and it is April 4th, 2017. And I am sitting in a cruise ship. This is the first time I will have ever done a podcast from a cruise ship. Maybe the last, who knows. And I am sitting here with Adam Taggart and G. Edward Griffin. This is just an extraordinary moment to be able to capture. And Adam and I have been on something called the Summit at Sea where Ed is faculty, I’m faculty, Adams’ faculty. And we’ve been presenting to a really curious group of people.

Ed and his wife, Pat and I, and a number of other people had just a magic dinner last night. The conversation went everywhere. There was really no topic that could be left off the table because everything was up for grabs. We went pretty far, didn’t we?

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: We went pretty deep.

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: I think by the time the staff was clearing every other table and sort of looking at us and wondering when we were going to go, you posed the question, so what is the meaning of existence?

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: We’d finally gotten to it.

G. Edward Griffin: We had finally got to the base-

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: To the basement, I think.

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: So, Ed, this is a real pleasure for me because obviously, Creature From Jekyll Island was a book that really, if I hadn’t read this, my seminal work in my life, the Crash Course. Which is arguably the hardest, most complete work I’ve ever done. And I have a PhD, and I will tell you I did more work, more concentrated to get the crash course out, but it started with this book, the Creature From Jekyll Island.

Which I remember exactly where I was when I was reading it. We were at our summer place in Maine, Simon Island. There’s very little electronic communication there, so I would, I had books. Somehow this one came to me. I can’t remember how I got it. And, but anyway, this was my summer book. And my poor wife, I was yelling out every other page like, you won’t believe this, right? And she was like, oh, stop already.

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: And-

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: It really, she will tell the story and say, it pretty much ruined her summer vacation for her. And the next year, she read it.

G. Edward Griffin: Oh.

Chris Martenson: And she was doing the same thing back. She was like, oh my God-

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: But it was the learning how money, the Mandrake Mechanism, money creation. Having had an MBA, having spent time in the business world, having gone through more education than anybody should. And not having run across some, such a simple concept. That’s what first dawned on me that there was a serious sin of omission in my educational upbringing.

Sometimes they’ll tell you lies but sometimes they don’t tell you stuff. This is one of those cases, I think, money creation. Tell us about when you were researching this book and coming across money creation? And what it took for you to unearth that and whether you found even otherwise maybe people at the Fed who should know, who didn’t know? I, to just, for example, just two years ago, I think? Bank of England came out with a paper, research paper, and they said, oh, my God, money is loaned into existence.

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: You remember that one?

G. Edward Griffin: No kidding. Really.

Chris Martenson: You remember that one, Adam?

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: That was a good one.

G. Edward Griffin: The Bank of England, huh?

Chris Martenson: Yeah.

G. Edward Griffin: No, Holliday had made that great discovery-

Chris Martenson: They did. And it was a research paper and it had, it splashed. And people were like, we did not know this. I’m not kidding.

G. Edward Griffin: That’s hard to believe, isn’t it? But no, it’s really not hard to believe. That’s where you come around to it. Because as you said, a moment ago, it’s omission. But the question is why is it omitted? Is it omitted because somebody made a mistake?

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Or they were ignorant. Or was it omitted because it was designed to be omitted? And so, when you really get into it, and you understand how the mechanism skews the whole economic system in favor of just a few people-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: Like you told me, the financial oligarchy. Well, then you realize there’s incentive to be deceptive about it.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Isn't no greater incentive than money. Money is power, money is, you can do anything you want to with money, almost. And so, if you have your hand on that lever of power, and you think that the way to keep your hand on that lever forevermore is to not let anybody know that there even is a lever, well, then you’re motivated to conceal that fact. And so, reluctantly I think most people come to the realization that this is by design. We don’t know much about this.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh. Well, and I’ve given talks all over the United States and the world, but I ask a question pretty routinely. Which I forgot to ask at this one. But the question is how many of you learned about how money is created in the banking system in your school? And to date, I’ve had zero hands go up. Although, one guy at our website said, oh, I learned that, out of all the thousands of people who come to the website. One person-

G. Edward Griffin: Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: Claims to have been taught this at one point. But this was back in the 70s. So, maybe this was taught at one point. But certainly, it’s absolutely not taught. And a good friend of mine, her son, when he was in the sixth grade, taught this, learn the, went across the Crash Course. And then taught this to his sixth-grade class using Snickers bars, right?

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah, the hardest part of it for me, and I think that’s where this is going in my own epiphany on all of this. The hardest part for me, was to realize that it was actually as simple as it was.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Because I was looking for a very complex mechanism. And I couldn’t believe at that time, that there would be deliberate deception in this system. So, I was working on the false assumption that everybody in the system was doing their best to make it work on behalf of mankind, and on behalf of society. And so, everything that went wrong as in terms of, oh, my goodness. We’ve made a mistake here. We have to learn from this mistake.

It never, I couldn’t entertain the idea that these were not mistakes at all.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And that the goal was not to benefit mankind at all.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: And so, where we would sometimes say, well, look. The Federal Reserve system is failing to meet its goals. Because it said its goals were to stabilize the economy and to preserve purchasing power and all of that sort of thing. Finally, I came to the realization, no. It’s - those are not its goals. If we understand what its goals really are -

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Then it’s not failing at all. It’s succeeding amazingly well. And most people like I have, have found that an impossible assumption. And we couldn’t get over that. I couldn’t get over it for the longest time.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And then finally, I just had to give up and say, well, that’s it folks. Let’s get back to reality now and take it from there.

Chris Martenson: Well, let’s talk about that reality for a second. Because I consider you and I in the same business in the sense that it’s just, here’s some data. Here’s some facts, right? The Creature from Jekyll Island is nothing but a forensic examination of a period of time. Here are some facts. Some people got together and showed up an at island. And crafted a secret deal that surprise, really benefited them.

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah.

Chris Martenson: And-

G. Edward Griffin: Big surprise.

Chris Martenson: Really, at the expense of other people. So, this is a thing most people don’t understand is that the Federal Reserve, the way it’s all packaged and sold. And you got Janet Yellen now, all grandmotherly and all of this and that. Is that the Federal Reserve cannot create real prosperity. But they can transfer it from one group to another. They’re a transfer agency, not a wealth creation agency. Although, people confuse that. Cuz we say, if you create money, you’re creating wealth.

Not the case. They’re really just transferring. As every central bank is. Not to pick on the Fed-

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah.

Chris Martenson: Ultimately here.

G. Edward Griffin: Sure.

Chris Martenson: But I think they’re all constructed the same which is, it’s a large harvesting mechanism. And I don’t know what any other way to look at it now. But people are having their wealth harvested and transferred-

G. Edward Griffin: Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: From the many to the few. But it’s such a tiny few.

G. Edward Griffin: Yes, it is amazingly a small group, isn’t it? And therein lies one of the great needs for the confidentiality, shall we say?

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Or secrecy. And it’s also one of the points that’s hard to accept. How it is possible that so few can control so many? And anyway, it’s a challenge. And it’s a great story. When I stumbled into it quite frankly, I stumbled into it. I, years ago I mean, many years ago, you know how old I am. Gosh, I go back before the printing press.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: Certainly, before the internet.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: Anyway, it, I had no idea about any of these things. And really not much interest in it either. But I became aware that I wanted to communicate some. I became very concerned about the United Nations, for example. You talk about taking the red pill and waking up to reality. That was my first epiphany that the United Nations, which I had been taught in school and through the media influence, I had been convinced that the UN was our last, best hope for peace. And we’re talking back in the 1950s, 1960s.

So, when I ran across information about the UN being something other than that. And that it wasn’t really in the interest of peace at all. It was in the interest of using the fear of war as a motivator to drive people into a world government, which was based on a totalitarian principle. But the totalitarian principle was kept sort of underneath wraps. You didn’t get to see that unless you really went exploring.

And all you got to see was all the propaganda about peace and how we can put an end to war. How we can put an end to disease if we just had medical care delivered to all the third-world countries and all of this stuff, that you think oh, this is wonderful. Let’s do this.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh. Yeah.

G. Edward Griffin: Anyway. So, I was aware of that. And so, I was interested in conveying to others what I had discovered. I decided I would make some little documentary films. That’s what I was trained to do. I went to school-

Chris Martenson: Hmm.

G. Edward Griffin: I did the field of communications. And I had worked in the television station. I’ve been involved in filmmaking. So, this was my chance to put to work the skills that I had learned for something that I believed in. So, that’s where my track was back in those days. And I thought, well, alright. What’ll my next little film be?

G. Edward Griffin: And the one shame that we have this thing called, inflation. What a shame that a person works hard for a dollar. Puts it away, saves it. And then when it comes time to retire, the dollar is worth three cents, or a nickel or something. What a shame. Why is that? And I really didn’t know. But I thought, I’m going to find out. So, I started to do a little research. And of course, anytime you get on the topic of inflation, you cannot help that all roads lead to the Federal Reserve system, or the central bank, whatever the country may call it, the mechanism by which money is created.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And it’s a question of supply and demand. And I’m learning it all the way. I’m going, I’m hoping I can come up with the answer so I can explain it to others.

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: And when was this?

G. Edward Griffin: Well, this-

[Cross talking]

Chris Martenson: What year are we talking about?

G. Edward Griffin: We’re talking about my opening interest on that topic was probably about 1965.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Around in there. Give or take a year, I think.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: So, I, anyway, but I pulled together a lot of research. I had a couple of boxes full of research and books. I did some interviews, lost the recordings. Things in those days were not so easy to, as I say, there’s no internet. So, you have to go to the library. The library, where they have books on shelves.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: And read them and-

[Cross talking]

Chris Martenson: Some guy named Dewey was involved, I don’t know. It’s-

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah. So, I have this little process. But it was a thorough process. It, you really got it when you went through all that rigamarole. So, I got this information together and other things came up. And I put it aside. I really never did produce that documentary.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: But I had my toe in the water. And some years later, I think it was about five or six, seven years later, a little group in Pasadena, California was a study group run by, you’ve heard about the little old ladies in tennis shoes.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: This was the real thing-

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: These were some little old ladies in Pasadena. And no, they didn’t wear tennis shoes. At least not at the meeting. But I’m sure they did around the house.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: And they had a study group on taxes. And they asked me to speak.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Because I had been offering myself as a speaker. And then they were looking for a free speaker and I was on that list. And so, I said, sure. I’d be happy to talk about taxes. But I don’t really know much about taxes. And except two things I know is that they’re too high and I’m against them. Other than that, what can I say?

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: But I said, I do, I might have something of interest to the ladies on the topic of a hidden tax. And so, she said, well, what is a hidden tax? I said, well-

Chris Martenson: Hmm.

G. Edward Griffin: Hm. It might be called inflation. Maybe it’s a tax that you don’t even know you’re paying because you don’t know who’s getting your money. Oh, that sounds interesting, she said. So, I went and pulled up my boxes out of the closet-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Went through them and it blew my mind. Because I had forgotten all of that.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And initially, the process was slow and incremental. But this time, it was all compressed. And I got the whole picture for the first time, this like, years later-

[Cross talking]

Chris Martenson: Maybe you slept on it and-

G. Edward Griffin: Picture, yeah.

Chris Martenson: It gelled, and there it was.

G. Edward Griffin: Oh, it just scared me to death. I thought, what have I got here?

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: So, I put together the presentation, cobbled it together. It was well-received. And they said, well, that was great Ed. You ought to put that on the road. Well, that’s the one thing you should never say to a blooming public speaker.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: You will put it on the road.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: Which I did. I said, oh, that’s good. I’m glad you liked it. So, I polished it up and I put it on the road. I started to give, interestingly enough, I called my one base seminar a crash course-

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: On money.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: Yes. I thought you might find that interesting.

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: I find that pretty interesting.

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: I did not know that.

G. Edward Griffin: Yes, that was it.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: And I did that for about a year, year and a half. And it was very successful, but suddenly, not suddenly. But toward the end of that period, I became aware of my total inadequacy.

Chris Martenson: Hmm.

G. Edward Griffin: To present myself as an expert on this. I knew a lot about the Federal Reserve by that time, but at the end of these seminars, people would approach me. And they’d say, well, Mr. Griffin, I trust you. What do you think I should do? I mean, only have a little bit of money. My husband died and I don’t know whether I should get out of debt. Or whether I should sell the apartment building I have because I have a lot of debt on it. What should I do?

And I’m looking at these poor people, and I think, you’re asking the wrong person. I haven’t the foggiest idea what you should do. And so, I stopped the seminars.

Chris Martenson: Hmm.

G. Edward Griffin: And I went to school. I enrolled in the College for Financial Planning in Denver.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: I didn’t want to be a Financial Planner, but I wanted to be literate in the real-world of money-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And money markets. So, I got my certificate. And I learned about these things. And then I got serious about producing the book. And then, that was seven years following that with more research. And the bloody thing came out the other end. So, it was a long journey. And I can tell you that had I known at the beginning how long it was, how convoluted it was and how difficult it would be, I would never have started-

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: Like all good projects.

G. Edward Griffin: Oh, yeah.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: This is not unique at all, I’ve discovered. But there were several points, Chris, where I gave the project up.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: I thought, this is too big for me. I’m just a boy from Detroit. I’ve never went to school on learning anything about money or banking and this is too big. And anyway, my conscience got to me, and I went back to it again. So, that’s the story. That’s how I got from there to here.

Chris Martenson: Alright. So, fantastic story. I’m so glad to have heard that. Fifth edition of the Creature From Jekyll Island, what sort of, what would you consider to be qualified push-back? Like, has anybody come forward and said, here’s where you have this story wrong, let us set you straight on this?

G. Edward Griffin: Interesting question. The short answer is no. And that’s amazing because I thought when I finished this, that I was about to commit what, author suicide.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: To take on the topic for which I was so ill-trained, such a complex topic. And one which I knew was highly controversial. And to produce a document which was offered as the authoritative topic, and the dealing of the topic-

Chris Martenson: Hmm.

G. Edward Griffin: But man, some college professor or some banker is going to get hold of this and they’re going to crucify me.

Chris Martenson: Yeah.

G. Edward Griffin: Publicly. I got it wrong.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And so, I timidly-

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: Put it forward and I was waiting for the-

Chris Martenson: The avalanche.

G. Edward Griffin: The avalanche to come. And it never came.

Chris Martenson: Hmm.

G. Edward Griffin: It never came. And I couldn’t believe that. And finally, it was confirmed in my mind that I probably accidently got it right. I was on a radio show back in the East Coast. I’ve forgotten what show it was, but I was invited to talk about the Fed. And when I got to the studio, to my surprise, they had a college professor there from a local university. So, it wasn’t just an interview, it was a debate.

And I didn’t know that. I would have gone anyway. But I was scared to debate the professor.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: The professor of banking and money. Cuz I knew that these guys had a lot of information. And so, anyway, the program starts, and they, and he gave his spiel about the necessity for flexible currencies. And all of the usual things how the Federal Reserve is a benefactor of mankind and protects the monetary system.

Then it was my turn to speak. And I just sort of blurted it out. I said, no. That’s not quite the way it turns out, here’s what I found out. And then, I thought well, here’s where the fun begins.

Chris Martenson: Yeah.

G. Edward Griffin: That. And it was back to the professor again. And now this is what you’re going to enjoy hearing. I thought, here it comes. And he says, well, what you say is true. But we’re living well, aren’t we?

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: I thought, is that the best he could come up with? We’re living well because he is living well.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And the benefactors of this system are living well. And everybody on government grants are living well.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And in the academic world, they’re living well. But the poor people on the streets are, who are contributing unknowingly all this money to that little narrow group are not living so well, anymore.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: I said, so, what he really was saying, since some of us are living well on the system, who cares whether there’s plunder involved?

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: Well, and as you know, we have this other overlay, which is you can put a plunder system like this in place, as long as resources are there to sort of plunder. And we’re at this awkward time in human history when oil is getting expensive and we’ll someday run out. And so, we’re going to discover the system that everybody’s been reasonably happy with, cuz it was enough plunder to share.

There isn’t anymore. And the system also in an accelerating fashion, holds it towards the top. And that’s why we have eight people in the world who have as much, air quote time, “wealth”. As the bottom 3.5 billion people; eight.

G. Edward Griffin: Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: Yeah. So, that’s astonishing. I raised that earlier question about the push-back you got. And by the way, I have a sort of a similar story. I, my mom had invited to talk to her Quaker group. This is 2009. The Crash Course had come out, and I was giving them the basic talk about how money is created. And this guy stands up in the back. He’s a retired professor of economics, and just yelled, I’ve taught economics for 30 years at Yukon, and you have money creation all wrong. And again, he just went on and on. I just let him calm down.

And I waited, and I said, well, if I have it wrong. And I reached behind me and I pulled out a comic book. This, the Federal Reserve creates comic books.

G. Edward Griffin: Yes.

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: Did you know those-

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah, I had some.

Chris Martenson: And I said, you’re going to have to take it up with these guys, cuz everything I just told you about money creation, I got from the Federal Reserve. And it’s in comic book form. Perhaps you’ll find this useful, right?

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: Maybe you might understand it.

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: So, a year later, I heard from him-

G. Edward Griffin: Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: And he apologized. And he said, I had no idea.

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah. That’s true. These people are not bad people at the rank and file level. But they’re terribly misinformed. They’ve been through the educational system.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: They’ve been indoctrinated to a certain-

Chris Martenson: Yeah.

G. Edward Griffin: Narrow point of view. So, I’ve had that happen. I had one occasion where after one of my presentations, the host had a dinner for the sponsors of the event. And of course, I was in the middle of this. And I sat next to a guy who was a bank auditor, okay? And he finally got around, he said, well, you don’t really understand the complexities of how money comes in. He says, money is not really just created at all.

He says, because you can’t just create something. For every asset, you have to have a liability. I said, well, I know that. But they create them both at the same time. Oh no, no, they don’t do that, no. He says, I audit the books. This is my business. I said, oh, I guess we’ve been reading different comic books-

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: And anyway, to make the long story short, a week later, I got a letter from this guy. He says, you got me thinking. I went back and I analyzed it. And he says, hate to admit it, but you were right.

Chris Martenson: Hmm.

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah, we do make it out of nothing.

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: So, here’s why I went down this particular line of inquiry. Because, so, you write this book. It’s super well-researched. It’s in its fifth edition. And there’s been no substantive real push-back to say, here’s how you have it all wrong. You and I have lots of experience where we’ve been able to open people’s eyes. And they go, oh, yeah. That is how it works, right?

G. Edward Griffin: Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: Well, if you can bear this, I just want to read from your Wikipedia page for a second.

G. Edward Griffin: Oh, yes.

Chris Martenson: Right?

G. Edward Griffin: I could bear it, but hardly.

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: So, here’s how the world is decided. And I’m sure you’ve tried to change this. But the people who have, who the editors at Wikipedia who’ve weighed in on your bio. Here’s the first few lines from how they’re introducing you. G. Edward Griffin is an American far-right conspiracy theorist, author, lecturer and filmmaker. He is author of the Creature From Jekyll Island which promotes conspiracy theories about the motives behind the creation of the Federal Reserve System.

And it goes on from there. And the use of the word, conspiracy, several more times.

G. Edward Griffin: Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: And you’ve got other lines of inquiry you’ve done around nutritional deficiencies, and medical stuff, cancer, things like that. 911, all of that. But how is this possible that you have a book that nobody can, that’s been out for a long time, in its fifth edition, there’s no qualified push-back against this. And somehow this is, it’s promoting conspiracy theories. How do, what do we make of this?

G. Edward Griffin: What we make of this, the fact that Wikipedia is vulnerable to outside influence by what they call trolls.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: That would be a good topic for somebody to write a book on. If I had time, I would love to do a book on Wikipedia.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: But it’s another one of those things that aren’t what they appear to be. Now, Wikipedia is fine on, I guess scientific information, or-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Historical information. As long as it doesn’t impact on the control mechanism of this elite that we’re talking about.

Chris Martenson: UH huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Now, once you get into those areas, then Wikipedia becomes the lapdog of those forces. Because all of the major corporations, I think that’s fair to say. Have to admit though, I haven’t check all of the major corporations to see if this is true. But I believe it is, that all of the major corporations, especially those that are dealing with ideas and products that relate on this control mechanism-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: I’m talking about money. I’m talking about healthcare and that kind of thing. They have full-time people contracted to monitor Wikipedia 24-7. There’s always somebody from those corporations watching it. So, the minute any entry is made touching on their sphere of influence-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: They immediately change it or correct it. And they have, because they have done that so often, and they’re paid to do it, so they can devote their lives to it. They move up in rank and become editors because they do spend time doing it. And they become the ones who are the gatekeepers for the information on Wikipedia. I learned a lot about that because this was about two years ago. I was called on the phone by a lady. I won’t mention her name right now, but I hope, I would like to have her participate in our red pill conference coming up.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Talk about that later, maybe.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And I’d like to have her come out publicly and identify what she told me. But anyway, she is an editor at Wikipedia. And she said, Mr. Griffin, she says, I’m an editor of Wikipedia. And she says, a friend of mine, another lady and I have become involved. She says, I don’t know if you know it or not, but we’ve become deeply involved in a controversy among the editors at Wikipedia. I said, really? Over what? She says, over you.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: Me? Why me? She said, well, she said, we didn’t know anything about you, but we thought when we saw your biographical information, the way it was being changed, we thought it was curious. So, we started to look into it. And we thought that it was very biased on the part of a small group of other editors in our organization.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: So, we started to challenge it. And she said, if you’re interested, she said, it’s all on the internet. Most people don’t know, but the challenging mechanism by which one editor challenges the other is all available if you know the codes to get into the back room.

Chris Martenson: Oh.

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah. So, she gave me the codes. And my gosh, this is a roaring fight going on.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: And we’re calling each other names and everything-

Chris Martenson: Alright.

G. Edward Griffin: It was like a cat and dog fight over me.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: I thought, well, that’s interesting. So, anyway, they fight, she lost the battle. She and her friend were told that if they didn’t drop this line of argument, they would no longer be qualified as editors. So-

Chris Martenson: Really?

G. Edward Griffin: It’s, yeah.

Chris Martenson: Their whole editorship was on the line.

G. Edward Griffin: Their whole thing was on the line because they weren’t conforming with this powerful block that was there. So, there’s, I’m sure there’s a lot more to it than that. But that was a very eye-opening experience for me. I just had to back away from it, because I had no control over it. I’ve never made an entry on Wikipedia for my biography.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Everything that’s up there was done by others.

Chris Martenson: Right.

G. Edward Griffin: And initially was done by people who were favorably impressed by my work.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And then the trolls saw that and they had to change it immediately. And what you read a moment ago is the result of that process.

G. Edward Griffin: Say, that’s the thing. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. And I try to avoid the word conspiracy for the reason you just mentioned. It’s not necessary. But when you’re called a conspiracy theorist, you can’t avoid the word. You have to deal with it and confront it. So, I deal with the concept of conspiracy a lot.

First of all, my reaction is that most major events of history have been the result of a conspiracy.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Conspiracy is the most common component of history that you can imagine. Everything. Especially when the stakes are high-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: The higher the stakes are, the more motivation there is for groups to band together and conspire together to deceive and overpower their opponents so that they can have access to the spoils. This is the motivation for conspiracy, usually.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: So, if anybody that says that they laugh at conspiracy. Say, oh, there’s no conspiracies, I feel sorry for them.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Because it means they’ve never read a book. They’ve never read a history book, that’s for sure.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And so, anybody that take the position that conspiracies are absurd to think that they exist, they’ve either never read a history book. They’ve never gone to a court room. They can go to any county courthouse and sit there as an observer. And I’m going to guess that maybe a quarter of these trials, I mean, not traffic court, but I mean-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: If they involve conspiracies of one kind or another. This is what the courts are full of is trying cases of conspiracy.

Chris Martenson: Yeah.

G. Edward Griffin: And so, conspiracy is ubiquitous. It’s everywhere. And the higher the stakes, like, as in government. Which means-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: I, the motivation is for conspiracies to exist. So, then we come to have to deal with it somewhat logically. Well, what is a conspiracy? Most people don’t really know.

Chris Martenson: Hm. So, what’s the definition? What-

G. Edward Griffin: Well, in most dictionary definitions they have certain components. They’re not all in agreement. But they seem to agree on the fact that a conspiracy is when two or more people come together and they use methods of deceit and deception to achieve a goal which is unethical or illegal. Illegal or unethical. Those are the three things.

G. Edward Griffin: They’re pushing drugs that they know are going to kill people, but they hide the information.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: We’re not going there today.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: But anyway, let’s just talk about the Fed. Okay. Is there two or more people? Oh, yeah.

Chris Martenson: Yeah.

G. Edward Griffin: There are two or more people. And that, there’s one down. Do they use methods of secrecy? Yeah. They have secret meetings. They talk about that this is a closed meeting. We do think that you’re not allowed to know. Yeah, of course. They don’t talk about everything highly secret. And is the result, is it either unethical or illegal? Well, now that’s where it gets interesting.

Because first of all, it’s not illegal what they’re doing. Cuz these people write the laws.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: That’s the reason they go into politics.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Is so they can write the laws. So, that what they want to do is legal.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Okay. So, if it’s legal, but the Federal Reserve, they’re plundering people legally. But what about this thing about unethical? Well, they would say, their actions are very ethical because they’re, the propaganda is that the Federal Reserve is stabilizing the economy. And they’re preserving our purchasing power of the dollar. Ah ha, I mean, my gosh. Anyway, so, they say, this is all ethical. They’re doing it for the American people.

But you and I, anybody else that’s not on the receiving end of all this money flow that they have there. And we look at what they’re actually doing, most of us would say, this is highly unethical. So, even though they escape the definition of conspiracy according to their definition of ethics, I think most people, what they really understood what the Federal Reserve was doing, would say, that’s unethical.

And there’s where you have the definition of a conspiracy. Now, whether you, I don’t insist anybody call it a conspiracy. I don’t care what they call it. Just call it a group of people who know what they’re doing and they’re plundering us. And they’re actually, it’s not so much a conspiracy anymore. They write about it.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And so forth. It’s all out in the open. So, the word conspiracy has a great, has a very limited utility in this discussion.

Chris Martenson: Yeah. So, it’s just astonishing to me that, so first, my view is that the word conspiracy and then the term conspiracy theory has been a marketed product of probably, I think if we chase it back to the documents I’ve read, said that the CIA first promoted that as a way to begin marginalizing people who are looking into JFK’s assassination.

G. Edward Griffin: Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: Because they wanted a way to begin to take people and make them fringe.

G. Edward Griffin: Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: And so, this began in the 60s. And they were doing this very, cor-, the documents have come out where it’s very coordinated. And they’re working in the New York Times, and the Washington Post and other outlets to being inserting this theory-, this theme. And it took off. And it’s still, and it’s really to this day, we’re living with the product of that. Which is it becomes the showstopper.

But when we dig into it. So, like, when we look at what happened with the Clinton Foundation, for instance. Where Saudi Arabia would give 25 million dollars to the Clinton Foundation. And then oops, here came this arms deal, right?

G. Edward Griffin: Uh huh. Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: To me, I see enough of those in a row and I go, wow, there’s enough smoke there for me to say, this is highly unethical, illegal behavior that was happening in that particular case. Because you would see quid pro quo, money-

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah.

Chris Martenson: For favors, right?

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah.

Chris Martenson: That happens all the time.

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah.

Chris Martenson: So, I remember that there were a couple things that caught me. One was reading about, it was Wall Street Journal, and their very rare articles that come out. But there was this article where a guy had been allowed into the trading floor of the Federal Reserve in the Equities Building. And no, this was, sorry. This was Liberty Street. So, this was New York. And he talked about how there were these people, these Fed staffers who could pick up a phone and there was only one person on the other end. It was one of those phones where there’s just, goes a single line.

And it would go to the JP Morgan trading floor. And they were trading bonds back and forth. So, JP Morgan is right on the front end of all this information. Then you skip over to JP Morgan’s ten queued profit and loss statement. And they say, oh, yeah. For no good reason, we had 200 trading days last year. We didn’t lose money on any one of those days. We made money every single day.

G. Edward Griffin: Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: So, they have a back phone to the Federal Reserve and they’re making money on every single trade.

G. Edward Griffin: Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: So, what I take from this is that when you see, when I see something like that where the Federal Reserve is busy buying stuff using money printed out of thin air and the people in the other end of the phone, like JP Morgan, are turning in 100 percent win ratios making, air quote, “making millions and billions of dollars” off of that. That feels unethical to me. Because that’s different flow of information that I would have access to. And they are, it’s certainly, if we can’t call it a conspiracy because people don’t like that term, what else would we call that?

G. Edward Griffin: Plunder.

Chris Martenson: Plunder.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: Legalized plunder.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: That’s what it is.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh. Alright. Well, so, here’s some speculation then. This has bothered me for a while. I’d love to get your perspective on this. So, the markets have been going up and up and up. And we know that the Bank of Japan is buying an intervening directly in their equity markets and also other markets. And they do that specifically on down days. We know the Swiss National Bank, cuz they report it on their balance sheet, major holder of shares like, Apple and other US stocks, big name stocks.

Federal Reserve in theory, is not allowed to participate in US equity markets. But superstorm Sandy comes along, and the New York Fed in “response” to that, air quotes, said, oh, we have to make sure that we couldn’t get caught by something like that again. We’re just going to move these trading offices just somewhere else.

So, they moved them to Aurora, Illinois. Which is where the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has all their servers. And the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is where we do: puts, options, futures, highly leveraged vehicles that are specifically across commodities and equities, and that’s it, right? Well, bonds is part of that equity sphere, I’m thinking.

So, that’s at bonds, equity, I mean, highly leveraged stuff. And the New York Federal Reserve just accidently moved their stuff there. And meanwhile, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, I could pull it up. They have something called the Central Bank Incentive Program, the CBIP, were, because central banks are such good customers of theirs, they’ve given them volume discounts and this is on their website.

So, I’m sitting here squinting at it going, our markets mysteriously get rescued all the time, whenever they have a little down day. Central banks have preferred incentive buying programs at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The New York Fed moved its offices to Aurora, Illinois. Theorized to escape the next superstorm Sandy.

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah.

Chris Martenson: How would you put those dots together?

G. Edward Griffin: Legalized plunder.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: It’s obvious, isn’t it? I mean, these things don’t happen accidentally. And it’s always to the benefit of the certain group of people.

Chris Martenson: Yeah.

G. Edward Griffin: And the idea that the Fed has got a line directly to a bank, let’s assume whether it’s Morgan, Chase or whatever. This is not cross pollinating at all because the Fed is the banks, see? This is the thing that threw me in the beginning. Because I thought, well, how does the Fed affect the banks? And it’s for, realized, well, wait a minute. The Fed is the banks. It is a cartel of banks. That’s what it is.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And so, it’s a nerve center for, it’s like a trade union for banks, is a way of simplifying it.

Chris Martenson: Okay. That’s a good way to look at it.

G. Edward Griffin: So, when the Fed, which is the bank cartel, calls one of the banks, it’s just calling itself, another department of itself. It’s a unity operation.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: So, that’s another hard thing to get around in your mind. Because it’s so different from the way we perceived it originally.

Chris Martenson: Right. Right. Well, we could go on and on about the Fed. Now, and of course I will later. But in the interest of this recording, I’m noticing that you have a really interesting conference coming up, The Red Pill Expo. Have you ever put anything on like this before?

G. Edward Griffin: Never before. This is an exciting new experience for us. And yeah. We’re talking about the illusion versus the reality in banking.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: The thing that motivated us to do that is that we find that economy, illusion versus reality, everywhere you look in the world today. And the more important aspect it is in our lives. It seems like, the more likely it is, that there’s going to be illusion there, rather than reality. So, we thought we’d bring all of these areas together. Because everybody’s taken a red pill-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Of some kind. Not everybody, but kind of people we’d like to talk to-

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: At least-

Chris Martenson: Be interesting-

G. Edward Griffin: Be interesting-

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah. So, we thought we’d provide this meeting place, this central place, this big umbrella to bring everybody together and talk about the red pills that they know about.

Chris Martenson: Well, and so, this is in, we’ll put a link to this of course at the bottom of the podcast, but this is June 23rd and 24th in Bozeman, Montana. Why Montana?

G. Edward Griffin: Bozeman, Montana, yeah. Well, first of all, we were interested in it because it was less expensive than-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: The usual convention centers like Las Vegas or Atlanta and so forth. And but then it turns out that it’s kind of a tourist attraction. Especially in the summertime.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: It’s got kind of a narrow window of good weather. But that happens to be right in the middle of it. And so, it’s a beautiful place. And it’s sort of out of the usual hectic distractions that you find in the big city. And a lot of people want to go there to spend their summer vacation. And they’re bringing their kids with them. They’re bringing the RV with them-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And they’re going to go visit the National Parks on the way, and so forth. So, it turns out to be a very good move for us.

Chris Martenson: Alright. And for those very few of you who don’t know, red pill is an allegorical reference to the Sci-Fi movie, the Matrix. Which of course, I reference all the time myself. And the red pill, when you take that, you begin to see reality and the life you’re actually in. And so, you’re billing this as an expo that gives the awakened ones a chance to meet each other and to realize they’re not alone. To develop ways to network and help each other to form a coalition. To discover who exactly their controllers are and finally to participate in activities that will dismantle the matrix.

So, this is something we do. One of the biggest values of the seminars that we hold, we’re just about to do one coming up at Row, is honestly the value is just getting the people together.

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah.

Chris Martenson: So, they can talk to themselves and go-

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah.

Chris Martenson: Oh, I’m not nuts, right?

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah. It’s amazing what networking can accomplish. And the internet is great, but it can’t replace that face to face contact. I mean, the kind of relationship that was being developed here on board this ship.

Chris Martenson: Right.

G. Edward Griffin: My having a chance to meet you and Adam over there.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And real people. We talk and we remember how our eyes look-

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: When ideas come across our mind. And so, it creates a bond, really.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And this is the thing I, one of the things I believe that’s been missing from what I like to call the Freedom Movement.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Is that we think we can just publish stuff on the internet, and it’ll somehow solve the problem. No, no.

Chris Martenson: No.

G. Edward Griffin: We have to get together. We have to become unified. Not that doesn’t mean we all have to agree on everything.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: But we all need to help each other. And there is this common denominator in all of these movements. All these red pills that are out there. The common denominator is that the illusion is being enforced upon us by the state.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: We talked about plunder. And I add the word legalized plunder. It’s that word legalized, that’s the element that makes it so bad in all of these areas. I mean, vaccinations, you could argue whether they’re good or bad. But when you have forced vaccinations, now we have a different animal. You can’t escape, your own judgement is short circuited. The state is now telling you what to do.

And everywhere you look, in schools, in medical services, and in banking and money, communications, even freedom of speech. Everything is becoming enforced by the laws. And you have to comply and be regimented. And this is the common denominator. I think if we find all of our red pill folks to realize that this is our common bond and we have to break that matrix right there. Get the coercion out of it.

Chris Martenson: You know that our good friend Jim Kunstler, whom I’m sure you're aware of the author. He calls everything’s a racket.

G. Edward Griffin: Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: And so, we dismantled the healthcare racket quite a lot. Adam and I both decoupled from the toxic food industry, which I had brought up on and ate. I was really falling apart at one point a few years ago. Much heavier and really starting to feel my joints were all inflamed and aching. And I thought I’m getting older, which is true. But that was my excuse. And then I went to a naturopath, got a few blood tests, very simple. And discovered, oh, I’m eating foods that are inflaming me.

G. Edward Griffin: Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: My body is fighting them. It doesn’t have energy left over to do anything else. But in the fighting, it’s also attacking my cartilage and my tendons. So, cut a few foods out, and wow. What a difference in my life, right? How does it come to be that I have to personally undergo a pretty interesting avenue of inquiry to find that? Cuz I can’t find that information at my doctors. I’m not going to find it from the USDA, or the FDA, or the EPA.

None of that information was available to me through what we would call traditional sources. Never taught about it in school. Every doctor I, almost every doctor I’ve talked to, MD, said was nutrition a required part of your training? And they’re like, no. It was an elective, or no, we didn’t even have it, right?

G. Edward Griffin: Uh huh. Right.

Chris Martenson: And it is the foundation of all health, right?

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah. Right.

Chris Martenson: So, it just, everything but it’s such a, this is why I think it’s fabulous to have a conference like this. Cuz people, once you wake up, you realize we’re surrounded by rackets.

G. Edward Griffin: But it is a racket, of course. Yeah. If you can trick people into using your product or your service. And it’s a non-competitive price, what better racket is there than that? Course that’s the whole pharmaceutical field, right?

Chris Martenson: Yeah.

G. Edward Griffin: And now, the element of coercion is added to it so that you are not allowed by law, you’re not allowed to use certain therapies that we know are highly effective. And now, you’re not even allowed to speak against the established therapies. Freedom of speech is now infringed upon in the health field.

Chris Martenson: Yeah.

G. Edward Griffin: Up in Northern California, as you probably know, the legislature there just, the local legislature passed a law that the school books, if there was any mention in the school books that questioned the validity of vaccines, they were to be removed from the schools. Yeah. In other words, it’s illegal to even question a scientific issue.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: It’s, they want to make it illegal to question man made global warming. And you go to prison now if you say, I don’t believe that. I think it’s bunk.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Well, you go to prison. And that’s what they’re working toward. So, that we’re back to that element of coercion and force in every aspect of our lives.

Chris Martenson: Yeah.

G. Edward Griffin: And this is the common denominator that we hope people will see at the Red Pill Expo.

Chris Martenson: Well, fantastic. And course, you’ll be there. And I see some other names on here I recognize. We’ve got James Corbett, he’s interesting guy. Cynthia McKinney, very interesting. Joel Salatin, friend of ours. Robert Kiyosaki will be there. Lord Monckton, Patrick Wood, very interesting people. And so, what do you hope like, you’ll have a bunch of obviously fascinating speakers, and more TBD. But tell us what, how’s it going to be structured? How are you going to run this one?

G. Edward Griffin: We want to be flexible. Because one of our objectives is to allow people to network with each other. So, if you have a highly-structured program, be there in five minutes and no time to talk or anything, you’ve defeated your purpose, I think.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: So, our structure is going to be fairly loose. We have a lot of off-time between speakers. And a lot of time to go visit the exhibits. Lot of time to go in and get a cup of coffee and sit down and talk.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And whatever else they want to imbibe. It’s not a heavy drinking group, I can tell you that. But there’ll be some people who like their cocktails, that’s fine.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: So, our real objective is to keep it loose so that there’s plenty of time for everyone there to meet everyone else there that interests them. And we want the participants to be a part of the program, actively rather than just passively listening to something.

Chris Martenson: That makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. So, you’ve got that going on. What else? What else is going on in your life? What are you working on?

G. Edward Griffin: Well, Freedom Force is the organization that I founded some years ago.

Chris Martenson: Oh.

G. Edward Griffin: And we just finished in December last year, we finished a conference, you’re going to love this. The title of the conference is Global Warming: An Inconvenient Lie.

Chris Martenson: Hmm.

G. Edward Griffin: Okay. Any questions about the theme of that one? I was pretty clear. We did our best to assemble the scientists, the journalists, the researchers to completely disprove without a shadow of a doubt that this theory of manmade global warming is complete bunk. It’s, what’s your word for it? It’s a-

Chris Martenson: It’s a racket.

G. Edward Griffin: A racket.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: That’s it.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: It’s a racket. I wish we had used that word. It is a racket. It’s a political racket to scare everybody into meekly accepting carbon taxes, more taxes, more government rules and regulations. They just passively say, well, we got to save the planet, so whatever you guys want to do to us, I guess it’s okay. That’s what the racket is. And we, I think we knocked it out of the ballpark. And we recorded it.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And as a matter of fact, next week we’ll be delivering, oh, maybe ten days from now. We’ll be delivering the DVD set on that. So, if any, and we’ll be broadcasting it, by the way, on the internet free. So, it’s not just about the money. Of course, we got to pay the bills-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: Like every operation.

Chris Martenson: Sure.

G. Edward Griffin: But we will have it broadcast for a week long on the internet. And so, if anybody wants to know the time and the date of the broadcast, just drop me a line and my email, let’ see. Which one should I use? The one that would be the best one will be, let’s see, [email protected]. Okay?

G. Edward Griffin: And it’s not, we were talking about the simplest concepts. They are difficult because they are so simple. We’re expecting it to be more complicated-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And we say, no that can’t be that simple. But it turns out to be true in this case of global warming, as well. May just give you one little factoid.

Chris Martenson: Okay.

G. Edward Griffin: We’re all worried about CO2, right? Carbon dioxide. Oh, that’s the killer. Well, it turns out the scientific evidence is as clear as the nose on my face that CO2 is a life-supporting gas and we’d all be dead without it. And as a matter of fact, historically, I’m going to go back over a million years, you can tell what the content was by looking at the fossils and so forth. We are now at the lowest level of CO2 in the environment that we have ever been.

We’re actually, it’s dangerous. We need more CO2 in the atmosphere now because we’re pushing threshold of maybe human life and animal life will, is going to become ill because we don’t have enough CO2 in the system. So, and this is shocking to me. I said, that can’t be true.

Well, it is true.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: And the evidence is there. They’ve known about it. It’s in the textbooks, really, if you want to go back and look at it. So, that’s just one little thing, for example. We have college professors that are talking about this-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: We have a professor that came from, it’s the University of Canada, one from Princeton. I mean, these, and we have scientists, astrophysicist scientists that works in that field all the time. And these guys are top of the class.

Chris Martenson: They must have been taking some professional risk, though?

G. Edward Griffin: They all are taking professional risks-

Chris Martenson: To attend this, right?

G. Edward Griffin: They did. And they’re right up front about it. Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh. It’s interesting, we have a climate change thread on our site, which is, we’ve got people both for and against. And it’s really well-moderated. It’s one of the few places I’ve seen on the web where it’s pretty fact-based. And people are going back and forth. And every so often, we’ll have somebody who comes in with belief-oriented material, which we don’t allow. We don’t do belief-oriented-

G. Edward Griffin: Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: On our site. If you either believe one way or the other, that’s not helpful to this conversation. But if you can bring me your facts, what are they?

G. Edward Griffin: Uh huh.

Chris Martenson: Cuz that’s how science actually advances.

G. Edward Griffin: Of course, yeah.

Chris Martenson: That’s how we’ve learned things.

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah. And so, isn’t it interesting then when politicians start passing laws and saying, you just keep your facts to yourself because they lead to the wrong conclusion and we know that that’s a wrong conclusion. So, any facts that you bring are not allowed.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: So, the belief system then overrides the fact system.

Chris Martenson: Yeah. Alright. So, you’ve got Freedom Force. And you working on any books right now?

Chris Martenson: Well, yes. I always have been working on a book it seems like.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: And the next one I’d like to finish soon I hope, is An Idea Whose Time Has Come. And that’ll be about Freedom Force International.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And the theme there really is that we talk about all these problems, but what’s the solution? If you don’t have a solution-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And I’m here to tell you the solution is not write your congressman.

Chris Martenson: Hmm.

G. Edward Griffin: Cuz half the time, your congressman is part of the problem. The solution really, if you want to cut to that, is replace your congressman. Don’t write to him. He’s already lost.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: You’ve got to break the system up so that the puppets of the controlling groups are no longer in positions of power. As long as they’re in positions of power, we cannot turn this around. So, that’s one of the reasons that Freedom Force has a couple of interesting mottos.

The one, the official motto of Freedom Force is in Latin. And it’s impotente stith andare libertatum non poussaint. Well, that translates into, those without power cannot defend freedom. A very important concept in the Freedom Movement that’s been missing up until now.

And recently, it’s been missing is because we don’t like power. We don’t, we’re opposed to power. But so, that leads to the dilemma. How do you replace power, if you don’t have power? Well, there’s a philosophical answer to that. It’s that the idea of truth itself will overcome power. That’s kind of not true. Maybe in a thousand years it will-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: But in your lifetime and mine, it probably won’t because the forces of evil, the forces of deception, can acquire control of the state mechanisms. And by law, make truth illegal. And we’re back to that theme again. That’s the problem we’re facing right now.

Chris Martenson: Well, they only do that as a last desperate act. But what they do in the meantime, is they-

G. Edward Griffin: Yeah. That should be we’re on that. Truth can be anesthetized for a long, long period of time. Well, that’s it. Truth, yeah. So, the unpleasant fact is that truth does not prevail just because it’s true. It needs defenders. It needs people who will speak the truth and proclaim the truth. And who will actually get up off their couches and go out and promote the truth.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: So, that’s the thing that’s been missing. We think, oh, we, we’re on the side of truth. The Lord will take care of us. Well, maybe in heaven and all of that. But how about on this earth and for our children and grandchildren while they’re on this planet? These are philosophical issues. Most people wind up, most wind up with the same conclusion that I have. And that is that we all had this drive, this motivation, this instinct, if you will, to be on the side of virtue and truth.

No matter how we might define that differently-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: We want to do what is right. We have that built in desire. And so, if that’s built into us, it’s probably built, put into us by whatever force created us.

Chris Martenson: Hmm.

G. Edward Griffin: And so, I have come to conclusion that, whatever I’m supposed to be doing in this world, I’m probably doing it because I can’t do anything else.

Chris Martenson: Yeah.

[Cross talking]

G. Edward Griffin: There we go, yeah.

[Laughter]

G. Edward Griffin: And so, I don’t have to waste too much time trying to analyze it. Although, I do waste a lot of time trying to-

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: But I’m just going to do what my impulses are.

Chris Martenson: Yeah.

G. Edward Griffin: And my impulse is to be on the side of truth. And that means I have to not just sit by and wait for it to happen. And say, gee, I wonder how this is going to turn out? We have to become active and real defenders and crusaders for truth.

Chris Martenson: I totally agree. And what Adam and I have been up to is that truth alone is insufficient. Well, for a very small select crew of people. But I’m going to call them a percent or less, are capable of hearing and sorting through. Everybody else, there’s a process that’s to become an effective communicator of these things that we’ve had to learn about. Which is that most people make their decisions and on basis of beliefs.

And so, really getting new truth in is a process of dismantling old belief systems. I think Niels Bohr talked about this in the science realm saying that science advances one funeral at a time.

[Laughter]

Chris Martenson: Meaning for the scientists who are entrenched in their way of seeing the world-

G. Edward Griffin: Sure.

Chris Martenson: Like, it was impossible for them to reconstruct their belief systems after a certain point after they’d invested so much in. And so, that’s the point. We’re really up against very entrenched interests. They have a lot invested in things remaining hidden. Things going in a certain direction. But as you and I know, this direction we’re heading in is a really bad one. Not just for individuals, but collectively, I think, for everybody. This is not a good direction to be going in.

So, we have to break through somehow and figure out how do we reframe this so we can wake up to the fact that all these rackets are running. They’re not good for us. They make us sick, fat and unhappy and all of those other things. But besides which, we’re really heading in a direction of really killing the planet overall. And that’s the way I look at it with consuming resources.

And looking at species lost and things like that. That’s where I get my motivation, is not only can we do better, but we really need to.

G. Edward Griffin: And we will, because that’s a drive. And back to that. You and I are driven by this.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh.

G. Edward Griffin: And I think most people are, once they hear the sound, once they hear the chord, they’ll say, that’s the chord I’ve been waiting for.

Chris Martenson: Uh huh. Yep.

G. Edward Griffin: And so, it’s our job to bang the gong. Let them hear the chord, hear the sound. And I think most people will respond to it.

Chris Martenson: And more and more are. And so, I’m going to take this moment to thank you for coming first. And for having been hitting on that gong for a very long time. And without your work, so many people, myself included, I don’t think would be here to carry that and pick that up. So-

G. Edward Griffin: Well, thank you.

Chris Martenson: Thank you so much.

G. Edward Griffin: I appreciate that.

Chris Martenson: For what you’ve done through all this time.

G. Edward Griffin: Well, onward and upward.

Chris Martenson: Very good. Well, Ed, thank you so much for your-

G. Edward Griffin: Alright, thank you.

Chris Martenson: Time today.

G. Edward Griffin: My pleasure.

Chris Martenson: Wonderful interview. And I hope we can do it again sometime.

Join the discussion

51 Comments

Monetary Expansion

I was taught monetary expansion (i.e. money loaned into existence) in two classes while pursuing a BBA in Accounting, in the early 70s.
One class was Macro Economics, which I believe was core curriculum. The other class was an elective I took in the last semester with a title something like Money and Banking.
Not a word about monetary expansion in my MBA curriculum in the 90s.
I don’t see how you could teach Macro Economics without covering monetary expansion. Without it, how would you teach formulas for M1, M2, etc?
Perhaps Macro Economics is no longer core curriculum for business degrees.
However, the dire implications of monetary expansion and the Fed were not taught anywhere in either of my degree programs.
Those I learned from on-line resources, like the Crash Course.
Perhaps this will shed some light on people saying they were never taught monetary expansion in college:

Griffin++, but faith-based skeptic on AGW?; Wikipedia--

This is a top-notch interview by Chris, who acknowledged the huge influence that G. Edward Griffin’s ”The Creature from Jekyll Island” had on him (and his wife – twice in her case ;->). The Wikipedia story alone makes this interview a ”must listen” – no more $ shall they get from me unless/until they reform themselves.
Griffin appears to be in the global warming skeptic camp. Chris handled this part of the interview in a gentle way, but did gingerly probe at the possibility that ”faith-based skepticism” (my words, not his) might be putting in an appearance. My undergraduate degree was in Chemistry, and I have yet to run across any convincingly scientific skepticism as regards anthropogenic climate change. Whether or not warming turns out to be the long-term consequence of greenhouse gas emissions remains to be seen (what with the slowing of the gulf stream) – but the short-term data sure is a slam dunk. Either way, big-time climate change appears to be a done deal, the only question being whether mankind somehow escapes the proclamation of the fork (”done”).
In honor of Griffin’s contribution to elucidating the mechanism of money creation (i.e., its being ”loaned into existence”), I will take a careful look at what he comes up with vis-a-vis climate change, but am not holding my breath.

Griffin as Messenger

It’s so unfortunate that such an authority on the Fed discredits his authority there by presenting himself as an authority on things for which he is not an authority. It is not possible for me to recommend his work on the Fed to others, as absolute credibility of the source is mandatory, when the subject is something as ‘heretical’ as a fundamental critique of the Fed.
Griffin does not seem aware that an institution like the Fed will use any idea, whether true or false, as a means to advance its ends. That the Fed and other Central Banks use climate change as a means to advance their ends does not invalidate the broad scientific, fact-based, consensus that man-made climate change is real. He should investigate the historical funding of anti-climate change publications, and reflect on the history of cigarette-industry funding for research that purported to de-link smoking from cancer.

Ok

Ok so I listened to the whole podcast. Loved Ed’s book change my life and perspective. I find many of his perspectives similar to my own. As a theme in my own life I often think “trust but verify”. There I find inconsistency’s in the verification process. I have a lot if respect for Ed and his research. Near the end of the podcast got into global warming. I have no training in climate science my concerns are in government oversight and what policy looks like. I am weary of getting into any discussion that I have no training to interpret the data. I felt he was assertive to it’s falsehood and Chris brought up about believe and facts. I’m not sure if Ed picked up on what Chris was saying. But for me some credibility was lost in my eyes. It makes me very aware of my own believes and if I can be correct on much of what I’m interpreting but may make assumption patterned on past conclusions. If we see the same story like the fed also with incentives in big Pharma. It may look the same in climate science. I’m comfortable with the his book. I’m comfortable in the recognition of how monopolies have incentives to control information. I don’t know if I could assert global warming to be false. I may not believe the evidence given or conclusions but I’m simply not trained in the data analysis. I suppose I’m uncomfortable with the assertion. It seems that excellent minds are capable of believes just as I am. Its unsettling. I would have been more comfortable with him just presenting another perspective on co2 emissions. I’m not sure what happened. Thoughts?

Ok

I appreciate what you’re saying, but really? Do we really need to be “experts” to work out that deforestation, 7.5 billion people, massive pollution and emissions of all kinds are having a dramatic impact on the planet’s balance on all fronts? I am well aware of my own tendency to blind myself with ridged beliefs. But I have my eyes and heart in nature enough to know that this isn’t one of those occasions. A spade, sometimes = a spade…..

"Science advances one funeral at a time"

Pipyman wrote:

I appreciate what you’re saying, but really? Do we really need to be “experts” to work out that deforestation, 7.5 billion people, massive pollution and emissions of all kinds are having a dramatic impact on the planet’s balance on all fronts? I am well aware of my own tendency to blind myself with ridged beliefs. But I have my eyes and heart in nature enough to know that this isn’t one of those occasions. A spade, sometimes = a spade…..

I’m very much in agreement with you. In my own relatively short lifetime nature has taken a brutal beating. I know this in the fish that are not there in Long Island Sound, I know this is the rarity of butterflies on a brilliant summer day, and in the turtle that are no longer on the roads to be helped across.
That said, I always prefer to let people say what they will without trying to change their minds on the post, especially when we are in an area like climate science that is absolutely loaded with belief oriented material. Unless someone has a firm grasp of both complex systems theory/analysis and climate science, the chance that they are operating from beliefs approaches 100%.
I’ve not seen the sort of science and scientists that Ed has assembled, so I can only reserve judgment until I have.
I will say that to me the simple chemistry of the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere equilibrating with the oceanic carbonic acid levels of the seas seems pretty straightforward to me, and that alone is enough for me to say CO2 in atmosphere is problematic.
And, I would be willing to bet that various parties like the Fed and Goldman Sachs are more than happy to exploit any tragedy for their personal, deeply morally wrong, antisocial gains.“Hey too much carbon dioxide you say? Let’s put a tax on it, which will crank the price up and price out the shitty poor countries from using any future oil/coal thereby both making a crap-ton of money AND preserving the dwindling tasty fossil fuel treasures for us here in the rich countries.”
My title of this comment is meant to point to the fact that even scientists carry a lot of beliefs about “how things work” and we know that various branches of science are heavily infected with belief systems that prevent rapid adoption of new material. Healthcare and economics come to mind.

Griffin's Skepticism

ParaDime wrote:

Griffin appears to be in the global warming skeptic camp. Chris handled this part of the interview in a gentle way, but did gingerly probe at the possibility that ”faith-based skepticism” (my words, not his) might be putting in an appearance. My undergraduate degree was in Chemistry, and I have yet to run across any convincingly scientific skepticism as regards anthropogenic climate change.

First, I will state, for the record, that I believe that the globe is getting warmer, at least where I live. I am also convinced we are in population overshoot and seriously damaging our planet. I can see that every where I go.
Having said that, CES, mentions “Trust, but verify.” I like Al Bartlett’s, “do the math.”
I imagine there is a lot of excellent science being done regarding climate. However, issues have been raised that have not been addressed by those involved.
Two game changing issues that remain unresolved relate to temperature history. First, NASA, has changed historic recorded temperatures. Their database now contains colder historic temperatures than their databases of 15 years ago. When I ran across this claim, I did not take it at face value. I verified it personally. NASA has changed historic temperatures to colder values. NOAA has now done the same with their database.
Now, when weather men say that today’s temperature breaks a record, you don’t know if it’s really true, or if it’s just a case where a previous record high temperature has been changed in the database. This also means that any science done using NASA or NOAA temperature databases may produce trend lines with the wrong slope.
Another claim that goes untested is increased frequency of extreme weather. It is often stated as fact. However, records indicate that hurricanes and class 4 and higher tornadoes are declining ever so slightly in frequency. I ran these numbers myself.
The thing is, there are endless issues within the arena of AGW science. There are entire books on the subject, by people who aren’t skeptical. It is simply not fair to assume that anyone who is skeptical hasn’t done due diligence.
If the last two decades has taught me anything, it’s that nothing reported by the news media can be taken at face value. Same goes for anything reported by the government, or ANY government funded institutions.
Thanks for not calling Griffin a “denier.” That’s a real red flag for me.

Agree with CES

Great point, CES – I find myself agreeing. I have to admit that I cringed and honestly felt embarrassed for G. Edward when he lead off his remarks about AGW science by saying something like “turns out that CO2 is actually needed for life to survive on our plant, and as such humans need it”. While he was not at all wrong about this, this point has nothing to do with AGW – either for or against – he started the entire conversation off on a 5th grade science level. Moreover, he presents this point it in a way that suggests that the people who think AGW is a problem do not understand this fact at all. Starting off this way sunk his credibility in my eyes, irredeemably tainting his reference to other sources of science that he said he had to back up his position. Why would I waste my time digging deeper when he starts out like this?
Whenever there are profits to be made from information based on research outcomes, history tells us that the outcome side that warrants the most skepticism is the side that stands to benefit or lose the most $. There will always be researchers skewing research results – most often this occurs in research created by industry (example – Monsanto’s research on the safety of glysophate and GMO’s), but occurs often in academia when industry money is funding research (pharmaceuticals and health care). I find assertions that AGW researchers are, en masse, skewing data ludicrous – public funded grants are not nearly as lucrative as industry grants. The most money to be lost are on research outcomes that validate AGW, considering that such validation poses an existential threat to industrial revolution business as usual. Academics can also be motivated by the need to distinguish their research in completion with their colleagues. An academic can make quite a name for her/himself by doing research that repudiates existing orthodoxy in a scientifically defensible way (via research that is widely accepted by colleagues). There would be much to be gained career-wise by scientists repudiating AGW science in a way that is broadly valid.

Integrity

Chris.
Really loved your interview with Ed Griffin. I have been listening to Peak Prosperity for a number of years now and have loved what you do.
It was especially a treat to hear Ed – after listening to his book via audible for the last few years – I recommend it to anyone who wants to listen – plus I also recommend your podcast often to my friends and associates.
I could hear that it was a little challenging for you regarding Ed position on climate change because I know how much of a environmentalist you are and a Climate change proponent. I would like to commend you for not editing out that part of the interview – and my respect for your integrity went up heaps to realize you where prepared to give him the ability to share what he did.
Keep it up Chris – if you ever come to Australia I will be there in a shot and I will
bring as many people as I can to hear you speak!

I cringed too

Yes I agree with all of the comments above. I was so sad to hear those last words on climate change. Especially sad to hear mention of “Lord Monckton” (sp?) in this connection. He is a horror!
In these circumstances it is probably appropriate to talk about ecology in the broad sense and to empasize all of the destruction that is plainly obvious and able to be documented. I have never had a bit of luck dealing with climate change deniers. I do try to consider their claims and have heard many of them say that CO2 is healthy and we need more of it. Yikes. Such a terrible end to such a wonderful interview.
I wonder whether there is anyone out there who could do a really good talk on “degrowth” and focus on the political philosophy that might accompany a shrinking economy. What do we call those who truly advocate shrinking the state? Anarchists? Is there a better word?

Shell Oil knew about climate change - 1991 movie

The comparison of paid climate change skeptics to the tobacco industry (“Merchants of Doubt”) is apropos. The oil industry knew about climate change in the late 1980’s, and Shell Oil even created an informative movie about climate change in 1991: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/28/shell-knew-oil-giants-1991-film-warned-climate-change-danger
When I hear the climate-change skeptics jacking their jaws, I ask myself just what motivates them. Sometimes it’s profit. Sometimes it’s tribalism. Sometimes it’s entrenched confirmation bias (not willing to admit they were wrong earlier, and thus ignoring any information that contradicts their belief) – I’d call this “stubbornness” for short. Sometimes the denial stems from fear — fear of having to face the future of life on an unstable earth.
Deniers that are motivated strictly by profit (the Merchants of Doubt) are almost unforgivable. The remaining deniers — those who are misled by others, or are trying to fit in with their peers, or are afraid — deserve our concern and pity. If they don’t recognize that climate change is real, and begin to prepare for it, they’re going to get a very rude awakening. It is happening now!

So who exactly are "the few?"

Wonderful interview. I really like and appreciate Griffin.
Who are the “the few” who designed and benefit from this scam? Do they have a name? Is it a group? How are they organized?
Who EXACTLY are they?

As always..

…my philosophy is to let speakers and guests voice their views, and then trust that you, the listener, can decide what works for you and what doesn’t.
Trust yourself.
I have that faith in my own ability to separate wheat from chaff, and I trust you too.
I find I gather a lot more from the universe this way; some people I agree with entirely, and some only partly. I take what works and leave the rest.
As I grow older (and wiser) I’ve learned that I know a lot less than I thought I did. Anybody who thinks they know how the world actually works has some more ageing to do, IMO.
😉
Things I would have thought preposterous a few years ago are now valuable parts of my life. Beliefs and opinions I thought rock-solid, are no longer with me, while new understandings have rocked my world view.
For example, I was certain I understood how DNA and natural selection and inheritance of traits worked. Turns out it was mostly wrong. I was taught what was known, as though it was truth. But it wasn’t even close. And so I either had to stretch my views to accommodate the new truths, or cling to what I knew because that was easier.
So…is it possible to hold open the view that we do not yet have all the information yet about climate change? Can we be malleable in light of the truth that humans utterly lack the ability to predict the future behaviors of complex systems?
If we can, then we are also open to receiving new information that may, if we are lucky, rock our worlds.
Further, having to respond to thoughtful critics means we have the chance to explain ourselves and sharpen our views and points. So there’s value in being thoughtfully challenged. Ed’s a thoughtful guy, so I’m kind of interested in hearing not only what he has to say, but how he says it.
Which brings us back to the beginning. I prefer to let people express their views fully because, as the interviewer, I am there to listen, not to speak. Which is how I learn.

Climate Change

Well I thought I must have missed something in the podcast so I went and looked at the transcript and no where did I see Mr. Griffin say he was a climate change denier. What he did say was that we are now at the lowest levels of CO2 in the environment that we have ever been. Would it not be more appropriate to say, gee that’s interesting can you share your source with me I would like to hear more about what lead you to this conclusion. Instead people seemed to be shocked because Mr. Griffin did not believe exactly like they do and therefore must be a “climate change denier”. If the objective is to learn more, pointing fingers will not expand our understanding. If I am not mistaken it took Mr. Griffin 6 years to write his impressive book. Just perhaps he knows something we don’t?
And frankly we absolutely SHOULD be questioning climate change and the cause because as soon as there is a consensus that climate change is man-made the powers that be will be looking at whom to blame. And to be sure that’s gonna be you, me, and all the other billions of people who are not in power and are not uber rich. When life as we know it starts to fall apart “the people to blame” may become targets of populations reduction. Wheew glad extermination has never happened before, we can breath easy and go back to shopping at Wal Mart and watching reality TV.
Makes me cranky when one of my hero’s gets the thumbs down treatment!
AKGrannyWGrit

Cui bono

Mr. Griffin does think conspiracies are a normal part of history. So, when it comes to climate change research dollars, who is handing out the research money? and which proposals were denied and why? Those who rule the money make the rules.
Just because there seems to be a consensus among the majority of scientists doesn’t mean their research hasn’t been skewed by who received money and what their research proposals were trying to accomplish. Everybody has to eat and scientists can be worn down just as well as anybody else.
I am very skeptical of any person or entity that looks to profit or control based on a particular scientific result. It sounds like Ed Griffin is first of all a skeptic.

Polar Cruise!

I just had a great idea. Could the PP crew have next year’s Rowe conference- should we all still be breathing- aboard a cruse ship traversing the Northwest Passage? I hear the ice is mostly gone, so should be smooth sailing. We could do some first-person investigating on this climate change thingy…..Aloha, Steve.

Altered records and extreme weather.

Les, I can assure you that when you hear about a record temperature for a given date or month at a given station, the current observation is being compared against the original unaltered temperature from that stations historical record. The 30-year averages maintained by NOAA for their ASOS stations are also unaltered.
There have been adjustments done for the purpose of assessing climate change. There are good reasons for performing adjustments (changes in station location and changes in land use patterns around the stations such as urban development or regrowth of forest on abandoned farm and pasture lands). If you want to call these into question, you will need to carefully assess for yourself whether the adjustments are done in good faith or with a hidden motive.
Finally, in terms of extreme weather, please take a look at drought, floods, heat waves and even extreme cold. There is a fairly clear upward trend in many regions for some or all of these types of events.

Interesting look at how vulnerable we may be to beliefs

On the one hand, I see Griffin’s work on the Federal Reserve as a very important contribution to understanding how things are stacked against the ordinary folk in favor of entrenched financial interests.
On the other hand, my best assessment of the body of his work is that while there are a number of threads, underlying all of them is a fairly extreme libertarian perspective. All of them describe some sort of conspiracy and deception designed to increase centralized control.
There may be more or less truth to some of Mr. Griffin’s claims. He and I probably agree that centralized control is in my opinion on the whole a major part of the problem, but that doesn’t mean that the issues those in power use to support increased controls are fiction. After all, why not use a real problem and come with a centralized solution to it? Or maybe, you just come from that mindset and you see a real problem, genuinely want to solve it and come up with centralized solution.
Also, just because centralized control is exacerbating the problem doesn’t mean an extreme or even moderate libertarian approach will help. It just might make things worse too. I think most of us agree that most of what we face are predicaments with no good solutions.
Finally, the fossil fuel, transportation, heavy manufacturing, construction mining and refining industries comprise perhaps $10-$20 trillion in annual sales. These comprise perhaps the industries that are most interested in maintaining the status quo regarding fossil fuels. The climate change “industry” is perhaps 1000 times smaller. If we include renewables and other industrial supporters of decarbonization, then we’re probably still at or close to 100 times smaller. If you’re looking for conspiracies, at least the ones that count, follow the money!
My big question is that if the author of such an important book can perhaps fall into advocating for other ideas that seem to be more toeing the line of his world view than an honest evidence based assessment, aren’t we all vulnerable to that? Where have we done this in our own lives even if our views are different? As usual, ruthlessly and compassionately looking at ourselves is the path to the transformations we seek.

Cui Bono

I have worked in oil & gas and in the metal mining industry. These industries benefit from the unlimited consumption of fossil fuels. There’s no conspiracy, it’s blatant profit-seeking. I’m not saying these are evil companies or evil individuals. That’s just how industry and society operates. Companies choose to consume fossil fuels and ignore climate change. They choose to mine copper, uranium, phosphate, iron ore, and everything else needed to supply our industrial civilization.
Honest conversations about what we know and what we choose to do (or not do) about it are always appreciated. I’ll mention again: The oil industry knew about climate change in the late 1980’s, and Shell Oil even created an informative movie about climate change in 1991: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/28/shell-knew-oil-giants-1991-film-warned-climate-change-danger
It helps to recognize that we ALL have benefited, and are suffering, from our wide-spread use of fossil fuels and the affect it’s had on earth’s atmosphere.
That said, the interview with G. Edward Griffin was well done. His work in exposing the Federal Reserve and the “nuts and bolts” (mostly nuts!) in our financial system is priceless. Thank you, Chris, for conducting this interview. And thank you, Mr. Griffin, for sharing your knowledge with us in such a humble and approachable way.

G. Edward Griffin

While I agree with Mr. Griffin’s opinions on banking, finance, and the FED, he is profoundly misinformed about climate change/global warming. He actually claimed that the atmospheric CO2 concentration was dangerously low, and lower than at any other time in history. This is beyond ridiculous. Through most of the last one-half million years, the atmospheric CO2 concentration varied between 170ppm to 280ppm. Only rarely did the CO2 concentration ever exceed 310ppm. It now stands at over 400ppm and is rising at the unprecedented rate of between two and three ppm per year. Global warming is the greatest existential threat mankind has ever faced. Is was sad and shameful to hear his views on this subject.

climate change

Studies of glacial ice cores, where gases are trapped in the ice and can be dated, reveal that over the last half million years the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has NEVER been above 310ppm. For most of this period it ranged between 180ppm and 250ppm. The present atmospheric CO2 concentration stands at over 400ppm, completely unprecedented during both the Pleistocene and Holocene Epochs. It is also rising at close to three parts per million each year. So, your comment “just perhaps he knows something we don’t” can be answered without hesitation. HE DOESN’T KNOW.

Looney Tunes

Like others I admire and Griffiin’s work on the Fed and am grateful to him for the effort. It is important stuff.
But on climate change…his views are looney tunes. Jim Eberle is exactly right about the incontestable scientific fact regarding atomspheric CO2 levels and the increased rate of change.
So I suppose, as CM advises, we take what was if useful and disregard what isn’t. It is unfortunate however, as most people don’t take that approach, the end result being Griffin’s seminal analysis of the Fed doesn’t get the traction it would otherwise.

A wee bit of discontent

aggrivated wrote:Mr. Griffin

aggrivated wrote:

Mr. Griffin does think conspiracies are a normal part of history. So, when it comes to climate change research dollars, who is handing out the research money? and which proposals were denied and why? Those who rule the money make the rules. Just because there seems to be a consensus among the majority of scientists doesn’t mean their research hasn’t been skewed by who received money and what their research proposals were trying to accomplish. Everybody has to eat and scientists can be worn down just as well as anybody else. I am very skeptical of any person or entity that looks to profit or control based on a particular scientific result. It sounds like Ed Griffin is first of all a skeptic.

In terms of who benefits. I see SO many more dollars being made and spent by keeping people confused about AGW. Basically, keeping everyone confused means business as usual, and there are trillions of dollars in the BAU camp. The Science camp gets little in comparison, and yet they keep coming out with research that shows things are worse than we think.
Change at the level needed may not be possible even under the best of circumstances. When there are thousands of companies making trillions of dollars keeping things like they are, I think this change will not happen.

Chris, are you actually

Chris, are you actually planning to look at the science and scientists that Ed has assembled?
If he is as truth seeking as he says he is, I would expect him to be open to other evidence that might refute his beliefs. In that vein, it seems to me that the debate style where arguments could be heard from both sides (I believe you and Adam reported on something like a mock trial on climate change at Freedom Fest?) would lend him much more credibility than a conference intended to completely debunk the idea of human-made climate change.
On that note, it’s one thing to say “is it possible we don’t know everything about climate change?” It’s quite different to say it’s been completely disproven.

Federal Reserve

I think the honor of “exposing” the Federal Reserve should go to William Greider for his book “Secrets of the Temple” in 1986. It is more thoroughly researched and historical. We have known about the Fed for a long time and the pleasure of creating money has just been too tempting.

Oh Man!

Somebody really kicked the hornet nest here. I see by a lot of the remarks on both sides that entrenched beliefs are really at play. Forget it, get back to his main message and what brought him to all of our attentions years ago. The Fed is a cartel that benefits its members and does nothing for me and you out here trying to live our lives. Privileged people are becoming unbelievably wealthy every day just because they have access to the Fed and its’ money printing power. They could not do what they do if we had a hard currency based on a fixed asset. In the meantime people who save 10 or more percent of their paycheck every payday, hoping they will have enough to get through their senior years are getting shafted. We will end up poor and on our own. It would be best for all of us to keep the AGW argument on a separate plain. Just my two cents.

Dutch Banker Whistleblower's Interview

I have to file this under “Interesting, and I’m not sure what to make of it.”
A Dutch banker tells of (or at least hints at) his life serving the elite. He describes “8,000 people who run the world” in secret. A culture of darkness. They all know each other and work together, even when they appear to be on different sides.
He began to develop a conscience and that made him become unable to serve.
They have a culture of Lucifer / Satan worship, which plays an important role in their cohesiveness and hatred of life.
He strikes me as authentic. But again, lots of stuff that doesn’t fit with my current viewpoint and is hard to know what to do with. Except, perhaps, just to see it.

Long but worthy

Griffin's Skepticism

Five years ago I would have thought G Edward Griffin was a “denier”. But, that was before I thoroughly researched the science behind the global warming narrative. I’m a liberal environmentalist, former engineer and current natural medicine practitioner. I am a very unlikely person to challenge an environmental issue. I should be a believer, and I was, but I changed my mind after a long hard look at the science.
I encourage everyone to at least look at the skeptic argument. The mainstream narrative appears sound on the surface, but falls apart upon further scrutiny. If you don’t believe me, how about world renowned physicists Freeman Dyson who said “I’m 100 per cent Democrat myself, and I like Obama. But he took the wrong side on this issue [climate change]” . He also says “It’s clear now the [climate] models are wrong, but it wasn’t so clear 10 years ago.”
There are many other credible environmentalists and scientists who have become skeptics, they just don’t get attention in the mainstream media.

Geoengineering

I have not tried to tackle the science pro/con AGW.
When I hear about an extreme weather event, I’m more inclined to wonder what government or multi-national corporation has been experimenting with their weather control tools again.

too little carbon dioxide?

G. Edward Griffin:
…And as a matter of fact, historically, I’m going to go back over a million years, you can tell what the content was by looking at the fossils and so forth. We are now at the lowest level of CO2 in the environment that we have ever been.
We’re actually, it’s dangerous. We need more CO2 in the atmosphere now because we’re pushing threshold of maybe human life and animal life will, is going to become ill because we don’t have enough CO2 in the system. So, and this is shocking to me. I said, that can’t be true.
Well, it is true.
[Laughter]G. Edward Griffin: And the evidence is there. They’ve known about it. It’s in the textbooks, really, if you want to go back and look at it. So, that’s just one little thing, for example. We have college professors that are talking about this-

I know that CO₂ levels can be measured from ice-core samples but I’ve never heard of them being measured from fossils. (Various assumptions are made about the prevalence of C¹⁴ in the atmosphere when carbon-dating fossils but how that might relate to the concentration of the gas in the atmosphere is unclear.)
I have not seen any data suggesting that CO₂ levels are dropping and the increasing acidity of the oceans and the knock-on effects on corals and shellfish aligns with the idea of increased levels of CO₂.
Even if global warming and the consequent climate change was discovered to be wrong tomorrow, the solutions that are being employed to tackle the issue would still be worth following; reduction in consumption of energy and finite resources.

What evidence?

Hi John
I am an engineer and have looked at various skeptic arguments. I have not found any that stand up to scrutiny. Some cherry-pick data and attempt to show declining short term temperature trends within the data while ignoring the overall upward progression in the data they use. Some build on the fact that CO₂ is used by plants as a building block for carbohydrates [true but irrelevant]. Some attempt to discredit individuals or organisations for adjustments to datasets (as explained above by another commentator). Some claim that all of the changes that we see are part of natural cycles. Some acknowledge that CO₂ and temperatures are indeed rising but claim that it isn’t our fault. Some point out that H₂O is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO₂ [true but irrelevant]. What else have I missed?
Which particular argument do you find persuasive? You don’t link to any material or refer to any particular knock-out argument. I’m willing to look at other evidence or arguments but none of the hypotheses that I’ve come across to date hold any water.
Thanks

Aha - atmospheric evolution

If you look at the history of the gaseous composition of the atmosphere, well, by golly, there was a time when carbon dioxide ruled. Many millions of years ago – there was much, much more than there is today. There was also no animal life back then. So in one sense, G Edward is right – CO2, though presently increasing, is still probably right now near a low point in the geological history of the earth. It took plants photosynthesizing for millions of years to help create the conditions that enabled life – human and otherwise, to flourish wildly.
But that has absolutely nothing to do with AGW, and is a really bizarre was to lead off an argument that questions AGW – the real question is about the composition of the atmosphere and the stability (or destabilization of) of conditions that support life on the planet. So he is taking a climate science factoid and mangling its context and mis-interpreting its significance beyond reason. This is akin to claiming that humans co-existed with dinosaurs.http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/Perry_S…
And, AGW makes simple and elegant sense from this perspective – by burning fossil fuels, we are re-liberating the carbon that has been sequestered away for milennia by photosynthesis that occurred millions and millions of years ago, thereby pushing up the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere.

looney tunes

Thanks debu… I was similarly aghast at the C02 nonsense he was stating as fact, and it caused me to question his whole perspective and justification for conspiracy theories earlier in the conversation. I was afraid he was going to talk about “chemtrails” next. THAT is how his mind seems to work. Blaming “them” is a red flag for me. It was a huge wake up call though about how these people’s minds work.

Global Warming

The data shows global warming is anthropogenic. There’s probably no way to reverse it at this point that will help humans. If you don’t like the proposed taxes to cut carbon emissions, fine, but don’t deny that humans made the mess we’re in. That discredits all your other work; it doesn’t look good. I read and appreciate your book; I read it cover-to-cover; it’s been life changing, but humans have really screwed up the planet in a million ways.

Global Warming

The data shows global warming is anthropogenic. There’s probably no way to reverse it at this point that will help humans. If you don’t like the proposed taxes to cut carbon emissions, fine, but don’t deny that humans made the mess we’re in. That discredits all your other work; it doesn’t look good. I read and appreciate your book; I read it cover-to-cover; it’s been life changing, but humans have really screwed up the planet in a million ways.

Global Warming

The data shows global warming is anthropogenic. There’s probably no way to reverse it at this point that will help humans. If you don’t like the proposed taxes to cut carbon emissions, fine, but don’t deny that humans made the mess we’re in. That discredits all your other work; it doesn’t look good. I read and appreciate your book; I read it cover-to-cover; it’s been life changing, but humans have really screwed up the planet in a million ways.

Banker Whistleblower Comment #34

I suspect that most of you didn’t take the time to listen to the Banker Whistleblower interview since it is not in English so a person has to read what he says in the subtitles and then trust the translation. Please take the time to do so. He is speaking the absolute truth. Thank you.
Broadspectrum

After some thought I'm

Governments vs Tyrants

Loving the book and enjoyed the podcast. One tangential comment…
Lately I’ve been noticing that people commonly reference “the government” as being the enemy of the people. “The government” is the thing to watch and be suspicious of. But I think that is a misplaced and dangerously inaccurate way of thinking. It is not “governments” that are the problem. It is “tyrants” that we must be on the lookout for.
Our government, with its system of checks and balances, was devised to deter tyrants. In fact many governments throughout history served the community well. It is only when tyrants find their way to power that we have a problem. In the USA tyrants found their way to power through a business environment that is very tyrant-friendly. We were so busy structuring our government to deter tyrants, that we forgot to do the same for our business structure. We allowed businesses to get as rich and powerful as they wanted. Then it was easy to corrupt the “government” (made up of “people” who are corruptible).
Case in point, from one random page in “The Creature from Jekyll Island” page 147 of the 5th edition paperback …
“As governments became more brazen in their debasement of the currency…”
“Governments do not like to be thwarted in their plans to exploit their subjects.”
If we replace the word “government” with the word “tyrant” in these sentences, we have a more accurate picture, and are better able to tackle the real problem.
Earlier on the page Griffin correctly identifies, “Unscrupulous merchants began to shave off a tiny portion of each coin they handled…”
“The Government” is an abstract concept, and can’t be tyrannical. I propose that it is the “Tyrants” and “Unscrupulous merchants”, the real people among us, who we need to consistently reference in our language.

Tyranny and change

Lisa
I used to be a fan of having a new constitution for our government. Now I think it should not be done! The chance of tyrants running any convention for its rework is too great. Hanging on to what is there now and pushing those in government ‘service’ to follow it is a much safer approach. To think that a better one could be written in today’s 1% top heavy power structure is pure fantasy.

Griffin's opinions on climate change discredit him

I was enjoying listening to several Peak Prosperity broadcasts on a recent long distance drive. Halfway into this interview with Mr Griffin, however, I switched to another podcast series. Griffin’s ideologically-driven and uninformed but freely shared opinions on climate change brought everything else he had to say into question. I sensed Chris Martenson was gently reminding him that there are other people with credibility who disagree with him on this issue, but honestly it makes me wonder whether the other “experts” that I had just listened to on the other PP podcasts were crackpots, too. Maybe Mr Griffin does know something about the federal reserve, but I will never know because his denial of the science of climate change completely discredits him. Ironically, for someone who looks at money issues and conspiracies, Mr Griffin has missed one of the biggest conspiracies of them all, that the oil & gas industry, the richest industry in the history of the planet, has been and continues to be subsidized by taxpayer (our!) money to the tune of billions of dollars annually for decades, even while the product they produce pollutes the water, air, and destabilizes the climate.